I babysit our granddog five days a week. We get along great; so great, in fact, that she follows me everywhere. It’s not a problem when she comes looking for me—except in one room. It’s a small room, and her ever-wagging tail tends to catch the door and shut it. It gives me peace and quiet for a few minutes, but she’s stuck.

That’s why I invented the doorstop. OK, so maybe I didn’t invent the doorstop, but I do use one. Nobody invented the doorstop. What’s there to invent? Just grab anything, put it in front of the door, and—presto!—you’ve got a doorstop.

Being a doorstop is so easy. Even a rock can do it.

That’s what one woman in Romania did. She grabbed a rock, propped open a door, and probably never thought about it again. After all, it’s just a rock. And it kept the door open.

When she died, though, the relative who inherited her house and belongings thought differently. He thought the rock looked unusual, so he had it appraised. It turns out this lowly doorstop was the world’s largest piece of amber, appraised at one million Euros (which at the time of this writing was equal to roughly one million US dollars). The Romanian government has it on public display as a national treasure.

Yet for all those years, it was seen as nothing more than a rock. Even when the woman’s home was burglarized years earlier, the robbers totally ignored it.[1]

You may have days where you feel so ordinary, you feel overlooked. Ignored. Taken for granted. You may feel like a doorstop when people use you to prop open the door to what they want. On those days, remember this: you are not a mere doorstop in someone’s life. You have great value in the eyes of the One who created you. You are so valuable to God that Jesus died to remove the sin that has marred you and destined you for destruction. You are that valuable.

“When I observe your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you set in place, what is a human being that you remember him, a son of man that you look after him? You made him little less than God and crowned him with glory and honor” (Ps. 8:3-5).

“But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love that he had for us, made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by grace!” (Eph. 2:4-5).

“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do” (Eph. 2:10).

Don’t let anyone tell you you’re worthless. That’s a lie from the devil himself. You have great value because of Christ, and that value is most clearly seen as you live for Christ.

And because you are made in the image of God and loved deeply by Him, I can’t help but love you as well. Because you are valued by God, you are valued by me.

“Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another” (John 13:34).

“Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another” (1 John 4:11).

See yourself as God sees you, see the great value God has placed on those around you, and … excuse me, but I need to go rescue the granddog. Again.

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[1] marketrealist.com/what-is-amber-and-why-was-the-stone-found-in-romania-so-precious-ex1